Lengyel reflects onMarshall after tragic crash

Jack Lengyel says he took the head football coaching job at Marshall after the tragic 1970 airplane crash because it was his chance to give back to football what the sport had given to him. Lengyel spoke to the Dixon Football Gridiron Club on Saturday night.

Chuck Beckley/The Daily News

By Rick Scoppe-Sports Editor/The Daily News

Published: Sunday, August 18, 2013 at 11:00 AM.

DIXON
— Jack Lengyel was sitting at home with his family on
Nov. 14, 1970
, watching television when he first learned of the tragic airplane crash that killed 75
Marshall
football players, coaches and fans a few hours after a 17-14 loss at
East Carolina
.

“My heart sunk,” Lengyel recalled before speaking to the Dixon Football Gridiron Club on Saturday night. “My first thought was, ‘But for the grace of God there goes I as a football coach, my football team.’”

The crash would change lives forever, including Lengyel’s own.

Lengyel, who is now 78 and living in
Phoenix
with his wife, was the head coach at the
College
of
Wooster
, an NCAA Division
III
school in
Ohio
. Lengyel applied for the job and eventually got it — after a
Penn
State
assistant turned it down and another, from Georgia Tech, took it, “stayed two days (and) resigned for personal reasons.”

“I got thinking, ‘Well, maybe I can help.’ So I applied,” Lengyel said. “I thought I was maybe the third choice, but I was probably their eighth or ninth choice.”

Whatever’s the case, Lengyel took the job and helped rebuild a program from, as he likes to say, “the ashes to the
Phoenix
.” More than three decades later the story of Lengyel’s resurrection of the program was turned into a 2006 movie entitled, “We are
Marshall
,” which starred Matthew McConaughey as Lengyel.

DIXON — Jack Lengyel was sitting at home with his family on Nov. 14, 1970, watching television when he first learned of the tragic airplane crash that killed 75 Marshall football players, coaches and fans a few hours after a 17-14 loss at East Carolina.

“My heart sunk,” Lengyel recalled before speaking to the Dixon Football Gridiron Club on Saturday night. “My first thought was, ‘But for the grace of God there goes I as a football coach, my football team.’”

The crash would change lives forever, including Lengyel’s own.

Lengyel, who is now 78 and living in Phoenix with his wife, was the head coach at the College of Wooster, an NCAA Division III school in Ohio. Lengyel applied for the job and eventually got it — after a PennState assistant turned it down and another, from Georgia Tech, took it, “stayed two days (and) resigned for personal reasons.”

“I got thinking, ‘Well, maybe I can help.’ So I applied,” Lengyel said. “I thought I was maybe the third choice, but I was probably their eighth or ninth choice.”

Whatever’s the case, Lengyel took the job and helped rebuild a program from, as he likes to say, “the ashes to the Phoenix.” More than three decades later the story of Lengyel’s resurrection of the program was turned into a 2006 movie entitled, “We are Marshall,” which starred Matthew McConaughey as Lengyel.

For the most part, Lengyel liked the movie.

“Basically, it was true to form,” he said, although Hollywood did take some liberties with what actually happened on and off the field. “Overall, it was pretty good. (But) my sideburns weren’t that long. I did not have a 5 o’clock shadow, and I did not dress like Bozo the Clown.

“Matthew took some liberties with my persona, but he’s a great actor, and he did a good job and he’s a good guy; little quirky, but a good guy. We get a Christmas card, my wife and I, every year from him.”

These days Lengyel is retired from coaching and being an athletic director, but he travels around the country giving speeches — up to four a month — to various groups, including “a lot of corporations.”

The focus, he said, is “strategic planning” for personal and professional success based on “core values.” Lengyel tries to translate what happened at Marshall and the core values he used there in rebuilding the program into something companies and individuals can use.

“When we did the movie I started getting requests, ‘Would you come talk to us?’” he said. “So I had to really think about what I wanted to do.”

As Lengyel did when he took over the Marshall program 31 days before spring practice opened with just three varsity players. That trio was supplemented by “about 42 walk-ons, three basketball players playing out their fifth year of eligibility, ex-policemen, Marines, etc.,” Lengyel said.

There was also another problem. Lengyel was a coach who believed in a power running game, which simply wasn’t in the playbook for the Thundering Herd.

“If we’d lined up in the T-formation, they (defenses) would have stunted and we would never have got the length of our nose,” he said.

So he changed. Down the road, Bobby Bowden was running the wide-open, option-oriented Houston Veer at West Virginia. So Lengyel and his staff headed to Morgantown, W. Va., spending the days watching practice and the nights talking to the coaches and watching film until 2 or 3 a.m.

Even then, however, Lengyel had a quarterback who was a drop-back passer who’d never run the option.

“He came down the line and he was like a deer in the headlights,” Lengyel said. “He didn’t know whether to give it or take it or duck.”

Still, Lengyel put together a team that won two games, including its home opener on the final play of the game, 15-13 over Xavier on Sept. 25, 1971. The other was a 12-10 victory over once-beaten Bowling Green on Oct. 30, 1971.

After freshman Terry Gardner scored on a 13-yard pass on a play called “213 bootleg screen” for the game-winning touchdown, many in the estimated crowd of 13,000 poured onto the field to celebrate — just 10 months and 11 days after the tragic airplane crash.

“We get into the locker room and they throw everybody into the showers, including the priest,” Lengyel said, adding that nearly two hours later when the team returned to the field the fans were still there. “People were crying and hugging because everybody had a teammate, a classmate, a friend, a neighbor on that plane.

“So it was a very emotional game, but it gave us hope.”

As he looked back at that time, Lengyel said he thought he was rebuilding a football team, but there was much more to it. Few communities are linked so closely with their college football team as is Huntington, W.Va.

“Their heart beats as one,” Lengyel said. “I’ve been at 15 different universities and never been to one where the community is like that. The town-gown relationship is like a fist.”

So when he arrived he quickly discovered the airplane crash had implications far beyond the football team itself. In all, 70 children lost a parent, he said, and 18 lost both parents.

“So it took a wide swath out of the entire community,” he said.

There were obviously trying times that first year, but there were difficult times in the next few years as well. As Lengyel and his staff bolstered their recruiting, new players supplanted many who had come onboard in the wake of the tragedy.

Some felt betrayed, telling Lengyel he wasn’t giving them a chance and reminding him they were there “when you needed me.” Lengyel tried his best to make the players understand, but it wasn’t always easy, reminding them “football isn’t spelled with an ‘I,’ it’s spelled with team.”

“Some bought into it, some quit,” he said. “And that broke my heart.”

Lengyel said some people ask him why he took such a difficult job. His reply is to cite a Chinese proverb, which he said goes like this: “If you’re ever given anything of value, you have a moral obligation to pass it on to others.”

“I was given a head coaching job at 29. So this was my chance to give back to football what it gave me,” he said. “Marshall’s success had many fathers. I was just the guy that laid the four-year foundation.”